Bears can’t hide flaws in late lopsided losses
The Bears should be grateful the season ended the way it did.
If not for the undressing by the Packers last week, followed with Sunday’s dismantling by the Saints, the Bears could have sold themselves the fairy tale that they’re something they are not. They could have looked at those three wins in December and their playoff berth and deluded themselves into thinking significant changes are not needed this offseason.
Instead, these lopsided losses will force the McCaskeys to take a good long look at who is running the team, who is coaching the team and who is quarterbacking the team. Or it should, if the family of Papa Bear Halas is as committed to winning as it always claims to be.
The Bears were 1-7 against playoff teams. Equally damning, that one victory against the Buccaneers aside, Chicago’s wins came against teams that finished 32-80. Four of those seven teams were deemed so dismal, their coaches and general managers got fired.
The better measuring stick is how the Bears fared against teams they want to emulate. Green Bay beat the Bears twice, by a combined score of 76-41, while New Orleans’ defense set a franchise record by holding Chicago to nine points in their wild-card game.
“We know this isn’t good enough,”
coach Matt Nagy said. “What we need to do is do everything we can to be able to win a Super Bowl. ... We got to sit down and evaluate that stuff, and we obviously know there’s a lot of big decisions.”
That starts at the top, with general manager Ryan Pace. He was the genius who decided Mitchell Trubisky was superior to Patrick Mahomes and Deshuan Watson, so much so that he traded up a spot to take Trubisky with the No. 2 pick in the 2017 draft.
The cherry on the top? One of those picks Pace gave the 49ers to move up and get Trubisky was traded to the Saints, who used it to draft Alvin Kam
ara. That would be the same Alvin Kamara who bulldozed the Bears for 99 yards and a rushing touchdown Sunday and had an NFL-best 21 TDs this season.
It’s clear Trubisky is not a franchise quarterback. While he played better after getting benched this season, it’s a little like looking through a fun house mirror. He put up good stats and made impressive plays against mediocre defenses. But when he faced the Packers and the Saints, he again looked one-dimensional. Certainly nothing like a quarterback who can carry his team like a Drew Brees or Aaron Rodgers does.
“I feel like I got better,” Trubisky said.
“I feel like I got better this year.”
Four years in, that’s no longer enough.
Nick Foles, acquired in the offseason to give Trubisky some competition, isn’t the answer, either. Nor was Mike Glennon, whom Pace signed in 2017 after cutting ties with Jay Cutler, who, say what you want about him, is the only Bears quarterback to win a playoff game in the last decade.
Which means the Bears are starting over with the most important position there is. Again. Given how badly Pace botched the quarterback choice the last time, can the Bears really afford to give him a do-over? Another misstep will set the once-proud franchise back for the next five, maybe even 10 years.
A decision on Nagy isn’t as clear-cut as those on Pace and Trubisky. Nagy never seemed to figure out how to maximize Trubisky’s strengths. And Chicago’s best games offensively came after Nagy handed off play-calling duties.
Yet Nagy never lost the locker room. The Bears lost six in a row this season, the kind of streak that would cause anarchy in most teams. But Chicago continued to play hard and made the playoffs – even if it did back into them.
“For us to get better and to be the team that we need to be, something we’ll do in the offseason is make sure wherever there is a weakness, we make it a strength,” Nagy said. “That’s going to take everybody.”
And it’s going to take acknowledging that the Bears aren’t a very good team. Certainly not one that should keep going down the path it’s currently on.